Tom's Mad Blog
November 20th, 2018 | Posted in General
I’ve been working on trying to get a workshop scheduled in Amsterdam on June 21-23, and it is proving to be very problematic. Mostly it is the outrageous costs of the meeting space and hotels in the area. I will certainly have to charge quite a bit more for the class, although thanks to the per person fees lunch will be included every day as well as coffee, tea, snack breaks, sweets, fruit, croissants, etc. They put on a good event, but it’s expensive. So I am polling my followers, let me know if you would have interest in a workshop the weekend of June… READ MORE
November 19th, 2018 | Posted in MAD Magazine
Here’s another episode of “My Favorite Panel from MAD #…” where I post, you guessed it, my favorite panel from the job I did for that issue. I don’t count the big splash pages because they’d probably always get the nod. This one was from the parody of “Ready Player One” from MAD #3, written by Desmond Devlin. Des suggested the addition of “Leroy Jenkins”. I had decided the only way to parody a movie that is full of MAD-like pop-culture cameos already was to include characters that no one in a million years would actually choose as their avatar. Thus you have Strawberry Shortcake, a… READ MORE
November 18th, 2018 | Posted in Mailbag
Q: You’ve previously described pretty thoroughly how to submit work to MAD – originally via snail mail, then through MAD‘s official submissions page. Now that MAD is under new management, is the submission process different as well? (The submissions page is still there, but it hasn’t been updated since the rebrand. It still has stuff about the Fundalini pages etc. in it, and as they don’t reply to rejected submissions there’s no way to tell if it’s even still working or not.) A: I visited the MAD offices while I was in LA last Monday, and put this question to MAD art director Suzy Hutchinson.… READ MORE
November 16th, 2018 | Posted in General
It’s elementary, my dear Watson… there are only six of my limited edition Sherlock Holmes prints left! Numbers 445 to 450. I have zero artist proofs of this one, so that’s it. If you were thinking of getting one for that big Sherlock fan in your life, you’ve been warned! READ MORE
November 15th, 2018 | Posted in General
One of the blog posts I get the most responses and questions about is this article I wrote back in 2006 about the “right of publicity”, which is a celebrity/famous person’s right to protect the value of their likeness… it’s a kind of copyright of their face. Obviously this is something caricaturists are concerned with. Can an artist do a caricature of a celebrity and sell it, and not get into trouble over it with the celebrity in question? If you read the article the answer is, as with most questions about the law, “it depends”. The other day I got an email asking about… READ MORE
November 14th, 2018 | Posted in Sketch O'The Week
I figured it was unavoidable to not draw Stan Lee for the Sketch o’the Week. Rest in peace, Stan! READ MORE
November 13th, 2018 | Posted in General
After his passing yesterday, it seems like everyone is posting their story of where/how they met the late Stan Lee, so I though I’d post my Stan Lee Story… I don’t have one. I never met or talked to the man, unless you count peeing next to him in adjacent urinals at a Minneapolis comic book show. Of course, you just stare straight ahead like the tiles in front of you are the most fascinating design you’ve ever seen when you are doing your business at a urinal. Conversation is not encouraged. I have drawn Stan into MAD a lot, though. I gave him a… READ MORE
November 12th, 2018 | Posted in General
Thanks for all the years of Excelsior, Stan! READ MORE
